


Good Night

by domesticadventures



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Established Relationship, Fluff, Headspace, M/M, just some sentimental nonsense basically, light and dark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-01
Updated: 2016-12-01
Packaged: 2018-09-03 11:19:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8710516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/domesticadventures/pseuds/domesticadventures
Summary: There’s a comfort to the dark, Dean thinks as he drives. He likes the night, even in spite of the things he knows lurk there.





	

It’s day five of their current hunt and Dean’s patience is wearing thin.

There’s been a series of attacks at a nursing home up in Hartington. Sounded like it wouldn’t be a problem -- just a quick salt and burn, Dean figured -- which means that it absolutely ends up being a problem. It ends up being a series of problems, actually.

The first problem is that they’re just far enough into Nebraska that they can’t really justify making the trek to and from the bunker each day, so it’s been nearly a week of shitty non-memory-foam motel beds.

The second problem, of course, is that people in nursing homes tend to die at a rate quite a bit higher than that of the general population. They’ve spent day after day going down one rabbit trail after another, they’ve dug up a few graves and burned a few sets of bones, and yet whatever is haunting the damn place is still there. Dean is tired and irritable, uncomfortable in his suit and on the floral-print couch in the home of what feels like the hundredth widow they’ve interviewed this week.

Normally, Dean’s not half bad at this act. After all, he’s been performing in one way or another for as long as he can remember. When he was younger, he was always putting a face on to spend another day at another school, playing at some semblance of normal for the sake of the kids who he knew would never be his friends but who he still didn’t resent enough to hope that they would ever be his peers. Nowadays, he plays at being a priest, a journalist, a park ranger, a police officer, an FBI agent. He has to be a friend there to listen and a shoulder there to cry on. He has to be whatever he needs -- or whatever someone else needs -- to get the information he knows they have, to get the job done.

Of course, some days are easier than others, and today is one of the others. It’s day five of this case and here Dean sits, shifting uncomfortably on the plush couch, tugging at the collar that feels too tight even though he knows the suit fits him the same way it’s fit him every other time he’s worn it. He’s waiting for Mrs. Krueger, wife of the not-so-recently deceased Mr. Krueger, to return from the kitchen with the iced tea she’d offered and wondering if this is it. If this will be the time he’s caught in a lie, if she’ll be the person to look a little too closely at his badge or his outfit. If she’ll notice the dirt under his fingernails, the gun tucked into his waistband, the smell of blood and gunpowder he can never quite wash out.

Dean’s easy smiles and his quick wit are usually enough to distract from all the flaws in his facade, but not always. The people at the nursing home are already getting suspicious -- too many return visits, too many questions from the FBI officers whose presence in this tiny little town has been greeted with skepticism since day one. He wonders absently if they should have gone with another disguise, or if maybe he could have put their suspicions to rest if he did something a little differently, played this part a little better.

He wishes, suddenly, that Sam was here. Sam has always been better at slipping into these roles than Dean ever was, better at hiding all the little things that mark them for what they really are. But Sam is a couple states over, working another case with Eileen.

“Dean,” Cas says quietly, startling him out of his reverie. Cas’ fingertips graze Dean’s leg just above his knee, stilling the jittering he hadn’t noticed until that moment. When he looks up, Cas says, “It’s all right. I can handle this.”

Dean nods. Cas pulls back his hand as Mrs. Krueger returns with their drinks.

And the thing is, Cas _can_ handle it. Dean forgets that, sometimes. Cas used to be light and sound cranked perpetually up to eleven -- nearly blew Dean’s eardrums out the first time he tried to speak with him, nearly blinded him more than once over the years they’ve known each other. Now, though, Cas is sitting there striking up a conversation with this stranger, asking her about her late husband, making sympathetic noises as she talks about his life and his death, listening as she segues into a discussion of the hobbies she’s picked up since he passed, leaning towards her like he’s actually interested.

Dean tugs distractedly at the cuffs of his shirt as Cas manages to bring the conversation back around to where they need it to be without arousing enough suspicion to get them kicked out of Mrs. Krueger’s house: No, her husband isn’t buried in the local cemetery, he was cremated, there are his ashes, in the urn on the mantle. No, she can’t think of anything of his she left behind at the nursing home, it was all packed into boxes and returned to her and now it all sits in the spare room. No, she hasn’t noticed anything strange around her house, why do they ask?

It’s only as they’re getting up to leave that she says, “Well, I suppose there’s the paintings.”

Cas stops halfway off the couch and sits back down. He says, “The paintings?”

“Oh, yes,” she says. “He poured his heart and soul into those. They put some of them up in the halls at the home.”

Cas looks over at Dean, tilting his head a little to the side as he meets Dean’s eyes. Dean raises his eyebrows in response.

“Does that help?” Mrs. Krueger asks.

“It certainly may,” Cas says, as they get up again. “Thank you for your time.”

“Bingo,” Dean says, as soon as the door shuts behind them.

He feels suddenly lighter as they head back to their motel. They grab a drive-thru dinner on the way there, and after they’ve finished eating their burritos on the bed, they start getting ready to wrap up the hunt.

They change their clothes. They check their weapons. They wait for night to fall.

\--

There’s only a skeleton crew at the nursing home at night, but they still don’t bother trying to talk to the person at the front desk. They had already been questioned a few too many times by the end of day two, had been urged a little too strongly on the evening of day three to come back during visiting hours please, agents, you wouldn’t want to disturb the residents. Instead, they pick the lock on the back door, slipping silently through the hallways. They watch each other’s backs as they search for the paintings with M. Krueger scrawled in the bottom right corner, gathering them one by one and carrying them out to the Impala.

They head away from the nursing home, making their way to the abandoned gas station they saw on the drive into town, a place as good as any to engage in some covert destruction of haunted property. There’s a comfort to the dark, Dean thinks as he drives. He likes the night, even in spite of the things he knows lurk there. There’s a silence, a stillness, a clarity he loves. The dark means he’s right where he’s supposed to be. He’s exactly who he’s meant to be. He has direction and purpose and both the skill to do his job and the cover to get it done before no one notices. He’s comfortable in these clothes, in this task. He’s in his element as they carry the paintings into the building, piling them up in front of the empty shelves.

That’s when the fun really begins.

Mr. Krueger’s ghost catches on as soon as the last piece is thrown on the stack and Cas starts making his way over with the lighter fluid. Dean is standing ready with his salt rounds, blasting the guy squarely in the chest as soon as he appears. Mr. Krueger never stays gone for long, but Dean is on it, hovering around Cas as he moves towards the paintings, firing off shots as they make their way back into the gas station.

Dean manages to hold Mr. Kruger off as Cas douses everything in the fluid, but just as Cas is pulling out his lighter, the guy gets a little too close for comfort, taking a swing with his palette knife in the space between one shot and the next. Dean manages to dodge but loses his footing in the process, sending him face first into the grimy counter. He curses to himself as he feels his skin split, ignoring the pain in favor of pushing himself up off the floor. He tries to blink away the blood dripping down into his eye as he brings his gun up too slow, too slow, the ghost is already--

Going up in flames. “Nice timing,” Dean says, letting the shotgun hang at his side as he brings up his free hand to press his shirt sleeve against his forehead. He winces at the contact.

Cas is there in an instant, forehead already creased with concern. “You’re hurt,” he says, bringing his hand up to move Dean’s away, leaning in to look at the damage.

“It’s not as bad as it looks,” Dean says. He’s telling the truth; it stings like hell, but he knows what a concussion feels like, and this isn’t one. Just a nasty cut. “Head wounds just always bleed like it’s going outta style, you know how it is.”

Cas doesn’t look entirely convinced. “Do you need to go to the hospital?”

Dean shudders in not-quite-mock revulsion. He’s intimately familiar with hospitals, with their harsh, bright lights, their pristine sterility barely pasting over the reality of the disease and death and hurt they inevitably house. Hospitals mean questions he can’t answer and scars he can’t explain. Hospitals mean money he doesn’t have. Hospitals mean he isn’t quite as good at his job as he wants to be. He’s been in enough hospitals to last a lifetime. “Nah,” Dean says. “Let’s head back to the motel.”

\--

Cas used to heal Dean after every hunt with a simple press of his fingers against Dean’s forehead. Even years later, Dean still remembers how it felt -- not the sensation of Cas’ skin against his, that is, but rather the cold burn of Cas’ grace all the way down to his bones. It made him feel like he was being lit up from the inside as his skin and muscle were knit back together. Not that he would ever complain about the quick fix, of course, but it always used to throw him off, after. He had tried to explain it to another hunter, once, had said, _You know when you look into oncoming headlights on a dark night and see the ghost of them overlaying everything even after the other car passes? Yeah, it’s like a full-body version of that._

Now there’s this: the dim light of their motel bathroom, the tired ache of his limbs, the warmth of Cas’ hands as he cleans the cut on Dean’s forehead. He knows Cas’ hands, now, knows the feel of them on every inch of his skin. He’s felt Cas’ hands in a thousand different ways, reached for them in the dark a thousand different times.

Dean makes it through the antiseptic without complaint, but he can’t quite bite back the hiss of pain at the first slow stitch Cas makes as he patches Dean back together.

“I’m sorry,” Cas says, voice cracking. “If I had my grace--”

“This is better,” Dean says, and finds that he means it. He knows it isn’t easier -- knows Cas’ humanity means that they have to fix each other up with shaking hands, that they have to work harder for everything they want, that keeping each other on the level takes a hell of a lot more effort. He also knows that it’s worth it.

Cas sighs as he pulls the thread through Dean’s skin and starts on the next stitch. “You know that isn’t true,” he says.

Dean smiles. He reaches up with one hand, brushing his fingers against the back of Cas’ wrist. He says, “It is.”

\--

Dean knows he doesn’t have a concussion, but Cas insists he shouldn’t fall asleep, anyway. They compromise: Dean wants to get home, Cas wants him to stay awake, and driving distinctly requires remaining conscious.

He likes driving at night, anyway. He finds the whole experience soothing -- the pitch black landscape stretching out all around him, the stars burning overhead, the only sounds the rumble of the Impala’s engine and the soft music playing from the speakers. He’s comforted by it, just like he has been ever since he learned to drive. And the fact that nowadays he gets to drive with Cas holding his free hand, Cas’ thumb stroking back and forth over his knuckles? Well, he certainly isn’t complaining about the addition.

They get back to the bunker just as the sky is beginning to lighten. It’s times like these that Dean is grateful that the bunker has no windows. Not that he’s not always grateful -- the solid walls only make sense, given the bunker’s purpose. Windows are a weak spot, a place where salt lines need to be laid, where sigils need to be drawn. Windows are broken glass and unwelcome guests waiting to happen. In the bunker, though? Nothing makes it in without an invite.

Everything is safe and sound and right where they left it: their pots and pans in their pristine kitchen, their books and movies on the shelves of their bedroom, their clothes in the drawers of their dresser, their weapons hung on the walls. There are pieces of them all over the bunker, sitting out in the open. After all, they’re meant to be here. They’re using this place exactly as it was intended. They have nothing to hide.

Right now, though, his appreciation isn’t anything terribly profound. He’s simply glad there aren’t any windows to let the light in. They could sleep the whole damn day and never have to worry about the sun rudely waking them before they’re ready.

Dean sets an alarm as they settle into bed. It’s a habit he’s gotten into -- Cas likes to complain about circadian rhythms, about the benefits of maintaining some semblance of a normal sleep schedule. Cas also likes to complain about the alarm going off and grumble for Dean to hit the snooze button, but Dean loves him enough that he usually doesn’t point out the hypocrisy.

\--

The sun may be up outside, but when the alarm goes off, the most Dean can see of Cas is the barest outline from what little light is filtering in from the hallway. Cas is a warm presence in the bed beside him, a comforting weight against his chest, soft puffs of breath against his skin. Cas shifts against him as he mumbles out some unintelligible complaint.

“Time to get up and face the day,” Dean says, reaching for the lamp.

“No,” Cas grumbles, fumbling for Dean’s arm and pulling it back down onto the bed. “Five more minutes.”

Dean huffs a laugh. He gives up reaching for the light and opts for carding his fingers through Cas’ hair instead. He presses a kiss to the top of Cas’ head.

“All right,” Dean agrees. “Five more minutes.”


End file.
